LOVE Yourself: Jessica Pearson
I’ve known Jessica for over 10 years. I originally met her while we both worked at The Driskill. From the moment I met Jessica she always exuded this level of CONFIDENCE in herself and her work. She was this eager front desk agent that was driven to join our catering department. She continued to be persistent until she moved forward in her career at The Driskill and joined our team. Over the years, Jessica’s persistence has been key in her journey and it’s been SO fun to watch her career evolve into her work today at PATH Nutrition.
Jessica’s background is in hospitality (luxury resorts and hotels), chef trained at a vegetarian culinary school, owning a catering company, and now she is a Certified Life Coach at PATH Nutrition. Jessica merged her culinary background and her certified coaching skills to empower women to learn what works for them and build a HEALTHY relationship with their body and food.
Jessica has always had a natural instinct to help people and now she helps guide people to live the BEST version of themselves through their diet and mindset around food. Jessica knows you have to do the work mentally if you want to shift your mindset around food and body image. And you can tell she has done the work herself in how she lives her life everyday. Jessica is pregnant with her first child, so it’s been fun to watch her physically and mentally shift as she prepares to welcome her baby into her world. And no doubt she will be passing down her wisdom around body image to Baby Pearson. ☺
1. What does LOVEyourself mean to you?
Loving myself is about nurturing my relationship with myself. Consider this...your relationship with yourself is created by your thoughts about you.
Therefore, practicing self-love means managing the way I think about me. I practice watching my negative thoughts about myself without judgment and with curiosity and self-compassion. This allows me to spend less time and attention on the negative and I can create more space for practicing the neutral and positive thinking. Boundaries also play an important role in loving myself and learning how to manage the discomfort of putting myself first at times. I think that people think loving yourself should feel like pure joy and confidence all the time and it's not and that's OK. It's a practice and at times it's hard but you feel so much better doing it. It gets easier the more you practice.
2. Did you have someone that exuded a positive body image for you growing up? A family member, friend, mentor, etc.
No, and I think it's more representative of the era than the people. My mom and most people's moms were on diets off and on growing up. We all bought fat-free food (hello snackwells!) and I think they all genuinely thought they were doing good. Still, I remember my mom complaining about her body or even making comments about other people's bodies that weren't positive, things I'd NEVER say now about anyone. I remember actually being upset with her for buying diet pills because even at 16 I knew that wasn't healthy. To be fair, my mom would say nice things to me about my body but having a role model of positive body image would have been even more influential and powerful. I had a lot of dance teachers and female adults in my life but if they weren't complaining about their bodies they just weren't talking about body image at all so I think there was a lot of missed opportunity to pass down healthy body image. My friends and I all compared bodies as teens, which is normal but we definitely spent a lot of time complaining and commiserating together instead of lifting each other up. We just didn't know that was an option! It was all learned behavior that I had to unlearn and I'm trying to be that mentor for others now.
3. Do you tear your body apart vocally?
I really try not to because you never know who's listening and also it doesn't serve me at all to do so, but I'm not perfect. It's normal for your brain to question your body's changes as you age and in my case during pregnancy. I might make a joke or vent briefly to a close friend occasionally because it helps me to process out loud but I don't think you'll find me "tearing" myself apart, ever. I might say things to myself like "oh that's a new pocket a fat I haven't noticed before...OK that's interesting." or "wow these pregnancy boobs are HUGE, guess I need a bigger bra." I like to frame it as neutral as I can and refrain from talking about it as much as possible. Who's more fun? Who do you want to hang out with? The person that spends too much verbal energy picking themselves apart or someone who's got more interesting things to talk about? I don't think my friends like me more or less based on the amount of cellulite I have. :)
4. Are you working to improve your mindset around body image or is it a neutral mindset for you?
Always! See #1. I watch the negative thinking and try to make it neutral as I can. I tell clients that it can be hard to adopt positive thinking right out of the gate because it may feel so unbelievable. Instead of going from "I hate my body" to "I love my body" we practice "I have a body." Neutral thoughts can be just as powerful and helpful as positive thoughts and they are a bridge to eventually believing new things. Neutral is also about acceptance. We can't hate our way into something positive, that doesn't make any logical sense yet that's what diet culture has taught us. Acceptance is the key to moving forward and creating change in mind and body.
5. Do you have anyone that you are trying to set a healthy example for?
I try to be an example of what's possible for everyone around me because I've learned that people are paying attention more than I realized, which is awesome! I don't preach diet dogma and you won't find me giving out advice about food or bodies at social events. People may even ask for advice, but I usually try to say something uplifting that's not about weight and then steer the conversation to something else. I want to show people that there are far more important and interesting things to share and discuss together. I know that some people are looking at my plate or what I'm eating and they might make a comment like "oh you eat carbs?" and I've done my own inner work to not be weirded out by that. I'm able to give them a helpful reply and move on. I had someone who follows our business account on Instagram spot me in line at a restaurant and she said hi, which was such a very cool moment, but she implied that she was "bad" for eating there and I just said, "I love this place!" People are kind of surprised when they see me not carrying any guilt or shame about what I'm eating. I love giving people something "different" than what they're used to seeing and hearing. I hope they learn a little something from me and pass it on to their friends, kids, moms, etc.
with LOVE and grace,
Elizabeth